


Deadlock

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [106]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Bank Robbery, Crimes & Criminals, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 15:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13527387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: Leo, Adam, Matt and Cody are robbing a bank but something goes wrong and Adam gets stuck in a vault in Geneva. Leo has two minutes to get him out before the police arrive.





	Deadlock

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an AU from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
>  In this particular verse Blaine and the boys (and girl) are a criminal team, very much like the one you can find in certain kind of movies or tv series (anyon said Leverage?), that's specialized in thefts. At some point, Federal Agent Sam Vanderbilt will make a deal with them (all their records will be erased if they start working with the government) but that moment has yet to come here.
> 
> Written for: Lande di Fandom's COW-T 8

The heist was supposed to be an easy one: get inside the bank, rob the bank, get out of the bank. But that is exactly how an easy heist becomes a tricky one: all you have to do is underestimate it. They should know that by now, but they obviously never keep it in mind. 

The bank is big, but not enough to be on the map of every agency in a ten miles radius, which means it's not heavily guarded as its more famous cousins are – anybody said Credit Suisse? – but it still deals in enough money to let them live off of it for a very long time. That is their signature move, after all. They never go for the big hit, because the prize, however big, is never really worth all the risks that are connected with that kind of operations. As Blaine always says, _A nice little thing well done is better on the long run_. The kids are so used to hear him say it that they usually end the sentence for him in an annoyed singsong voice.

The only big variation to their routine this time is the change in location. They usually work in the United States – where they know the language, the currency and everything else they might need to understand before trying to rob a bank or anything else – but Blaine decided it was time for a little holiday and so he moved them all in Switzerland. They landed in Geneva three weeks ago and had all the time they needed to study the place, and also to play the tourists. Cody was so excited to be so close to so many ancient places – Leo honestly didn't bother to learn one single name – that he couldn't be kept inside the house they rented for more than two hours. He had to visit everything he could, in some cases more than once.

Leo would describe the whole experience as excruciatingly painful – it's not easy to stay for more than forty minutes in the crypt of a church where you can't use your phone or touch anything when you are a guy who literally has to move and distract himself constantly – except for a glorious day that they crossed the border to Italy and ate the best _pasta al pesto_ he had ever tasted in Genoa.

The plan was to rob the bank on Sunday night and be on a plane three hours later, but it looks like they might be staying for a while longer. Possibly in jail. Even tho Leo is not sure if you're immediately deported to your country when you commit a crime somewhere else, or if they keep you there for a while, during the trial and stuff like that, before kicking you out so that your own government can deal with detention. He would like to google it, but that's not exactly the right time and he needs to focus.

“Hey, nerd, are you still there?” Adam voice sounds annoyed and slightly on edge through the headset. “It's not the right time to space out.”

“I didn't space out!” Leo retorts. Actually, he did, but that's not something he will admit to Adam; the guy already gives him enough hell for his condition to give him more bullets to shoot at him. “Tell me exactly what you did.”

Tonight, only Adam, Cody and Matt went in, with Leo doing the support from remote as per usual. Blaine and Annie's role in this what pivotal but very brief. They were Graham Wallace – a very rich businessman from New York – and his lovely daughter Julie coming to look for a good safe-deposit box for Julie who was going to start school in Geneva next autumn and of course needed a place to put away her jewels and money. As the bank manager showed them around, Blaine and Annie had the time to check all the security details – how many cameras, how many numeric keypads, stuff like that – and to place the jammer Leo was going to need later to block any signal and work undisturbed.

Everything went quite well up to exiting the vault. Cody was there to open it, Matt to empty it and Adam to protect them both while helping with the emptying part. They were all out except Adam when the vault door closed on him, trapping him inside. Matt and Cody tried to free him, but there was no way they could force a five tons steel door open just pulling it. Adam had to scream at them to get out. A few seconds later the alarm went off.

“I didn't do anything!” He says.

“If that sentence was true, now you would be here in this van with me,” Leo frowns as his fingers type away super fast on the keyboard.

“I guarantee you, if I was there in the van, you'd be exiting it through the window,” Adam retorts.

Leo takes a deep breath and a sip of his energy drink. He needs the first to prevent himself from screaming at Adam and the second to fuel his brain cells. He had four of those caffeine-based drinks in the past two hours, which is going to mess with his meds, but he really hopes it's gonna end up in a 24-hours sleeping section – like it usually does once the effect of the caffeine wears off – and not in a neurotic trip, which happened once or twice and it was never as fun as it sounds.

“Fine, I rephrase it,” he says. If he keeps communicating with him, Adam might get something at some point. Even dogs learn tricks after all. “What is the situation?”

“I don't know! The big ass door is locked. No windows. No other doors,” Adam says, probably looking around. “And the freaking alarm is driving me nuts! Weren't you supposed to stop it from going off with that magic box of yours?”

“My box stopped the signal from getting to the precinct,” Leo precises as he pushes himself towards another laptop on his office chair, “but that thing is loud and someone's gonna hear it sooner or later, and _they_ are gonna call the cops, despite my beautiful jammer, which you will have to retrieve by the way. That's the only one I have.”

“Can we talk about your toys later?” Adam snorts. “How much time do we have before the police gets here?”

Leo looks at his watch. “A couple of minutes. Three tops.”

“Great!” Adam exclaims without enthusiasm. “So, what do I do?”

“Alright, is there a keypad inside the vault?”

Leo can imagine him stopping in the middle of the empty vault with the same emptiness behind his eyes. “What's a keypad?”

Leo closes his eyes and counts to ten. Why does he even bother _talking_ to him? “It's a pad, with keys,” he says with a sigh.

“You're not helping.”

Leo whine's of desperation can be heard under the alarm's blaring. “Is there anything in there even remotely resembling the virtual keyboard of your mobile phone?” He asks. “The one that shows up whenever you want to send a text.”

“Yes! Near the door!”

“Go figure,” Leo hits enter and then moves back to the first screen. He can't see Adam, only the exterior of the building, which will be useful when the cops will arrive, but it's like being blind as far as anything else is concerned. They really need some cams. It's time to enter the second half of the twenty-first century. “Okay, what does it say?”

“It doesn't say anything, it's a keyboard.”

“Doesn't it have a screen?”

“No!”

Leo grumbles, he really thought he was going to be able to access it without involving Adam, but it looks like he won't be. “Use your phone to show it to me.”

“Do we have time for this?”

“Not if you keep questioning me. Show me the goddamn keypad!”

“Fine! Don't scream at me,” Adam frowns, grabbing his phone and looking for his camera. “Jesus! You're hysteric.”

A few seconds later, Leo can see the keypad with his own eyes through his phone. “Adam, you will have to open this for me, okay? There are four screws on—“ He sees a shadow on the screen, then he hears a crash and then the image becomes clear again. Now there's no more grill and the keypad is naked. “Or you can do that, yeah.”

“It's quicker, isn't it?”

“Yes. Except, don't do that anymore until I tell you,” Leo says. “You have your tools with you, right? Grab that little red box I gave you all before you left. Do you remember?”

“The one I told you I wouldn't need because Cody's fingers are magic and he could open anything?”

“A lot of things in Cody are magic, but yes, that one,” Leo confirms. “Guess what? You need it.”

“Don't gloat,” Adam warns him.

“Get out of that vault and stop me,” Leo replies. There's always a moment, when things get particularly hard or dangerous, that their brains just switch into a specific mindset. Blaine taught them all this way. They bicker and talk and scream at each other, but they know they have to fix the problem, whatever it is. Failing is not even an option, and that is so much a given for them that their brain just don't consider any other scenario, which actually helps them always find the way out of a mess.

This is what's happening right now. “What do I do?”

“Connect the red box to the keypad,” Leo explains. “Then I should be able to use it from here.”

Adam looks at the two cables coming out of the box, and even if technology is not exactly his thing, he was still born in the digital era, so he gets what cable goes where; while half of his weird family plays video games or hacks the next bank (both things are equally possible), he usually paints on canvas, but this he can do. “How much time do we have?”

Leo looks at his watch again. “One minute from now. I've got two police cars coming your way,” Leo says, his voice calm and controlled. “We can do this.”

“I don't doubt that, nerd.”

Leo smiles, his fingers already on the keyboard. “Press the green button.”

From that moment on it's easy, really. They only have to be quick, and luckily for them Leo's devices always are. Nothing less would be okay for him when his brain works a split second faster than the rest of his body; he hates waiting. Now, vaults are not supposed to be opened from the inside for obvious reasons. If you get stuck inside, you're either a robber and the police will find you within five minutes because of the alarm, or you're a clumsy bank manager and someone is bound to realize you're in there sooner or later.

Officially, there are no other options. But in reality there's always a third choice, especially when a keypad is involved. The mere fact that there is a keypad means it can be used, and if it can be used, then there must be a code it responds to. Possibly a failsafe code in case the above bank manager were also annoying, other than clumsy, and nobody cared where he was or if he died trapped in a vault.  
That's what the red box is for. He can find the code with it.

“I don't want to rush you or anything,” Adam says. “But I can hear the sirens. They're close.”

Leo looks at the green numbers appearing one after the other on his screen. “Five more seconds, hang in there.”

Adam starts wearing his backpack, ready to run out of there the moment the door opens. “It's not like I can go anywhere, you know?

“Now!” The door stars opening the same moment Leo speaks and Adam is out as soon as there's enough room for him to pass through. “You've got 20 seconds, man.”

Running his is thing. That and punching people in the face. But mostly running and jumping. It's the only one in the family who wakes up at six in the morning and goes jogging with Blaine. The old man doesn't parkour at all – maybe it's his joints, Adam doesn't know and he's under the impression that it would be rude to ask – but he can run, he got stamina and breath, and Adam has actually had _to train himself_ to keep up with him. It was harder than he had thought, but he managed, so he can do this too.

“Ten seconds,” Leo informs him. “Keep running.”

Adam rushes down the hall, grabs the last bag of money Matt left for him to take – as he was supposed to – and keeps going, his heart beating so fast that he can hear it over the alarm.

“Five seconds. Matt is outside.”

Adam's going so fast that he seems to explode out of the building more than exiting it, and Matt really is there, the engine of the pick-up running and the door already open for him.

To Leo's “Time out!” the agents swarms into the building, but Adam and Matt are already gone.

*

Following the plan, Matt made sure they weren't followed and then stopped the car and abandoned it a few miles away from the bank, in a patch of trees just outside the interstate. Leo picks them up with his van and they proceed to go straight to the airport where Annie and Blaine are waiting for them.

“That was close,” Adam sighs, sprawled on the passenger seat. He usually hates Leo's habit of always having food and drink at hand, but he can really use something to drink now, even if it's just a coke. And there's a whole bag of chips still unopened. A miracle.

“Too close,” Matt comments from the back. He's sitting on the floor of the van and he's sorting out the money in six suitcases among everybody's underwear and socks as Cody sleeps, his head resting on his right knee.

“If Blaine knows...”

“...we will never hear the end of it,” Leo says. He's holding the wheel very tight, forcing his mind to focus on the street and his eyes open.

“That's why y'all ain't tellin' him,” Matt concludes, matter-of-factly. He's all about truth and shit, but some truths only raise people's pressure and this is not worth an heart attack. “I'll tell cupcake when he wakes up.”

Adam watches Leo's fingers shaking so bad that he's having a hard time closing them around the wheel. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah.”

“For real?” Adam asks, this time seriously.

“No,” Leo sighs. “It's the end of the caffeine-rush.”

Adam grabs the wheel for him. “Scoot over, come on. I'll drive.”

“No!” Leo protests as Adam basically forces him to move and steals the driver's seat from him. “You almost got caught!”

“And I want to enjoy my freedom by staying alive,” Adam chuckles. “You're dozing off. Besides, there's something in my bag you might want to take a look at.”

Leo frowns, curiously. He grabs Adam's backpack and rummages inside. His hand closes around a black box the size of a sugar bowl. “You remembered!” He says excitedly.

Adam smiles, without turning to him. “It was on the way.”

It was not. Being it exactly on the other side of the room, Adam must have made a detour to grab it. But that's what makes the team work, isn't it? Adam could trust Leo's counting down the seconds enough to use some of them not to leave his things behind.

“Thank you,” Leo whispers, holding his box.  
But he's already asleep.


End file.
